Unzho Vip Iku

1.

"I admit it. I made her walk in front of that bus, and I'm not even sorry. Is that what you wanted to hear? Does that make you happy? Are you going to lock me up for the rest of my life now? I don't really care, as long as she's gone. She was pure evil. Any price was worth it to see her blood splattered all over the place."

The doctor glanced down at the psychological profile, his eyes squinting slightly.


Psychosis; delusions of grandeur. Patient believes that he can affect material events which are in no way in his power. He is no danger to others but must be confined as he would likely place himself in hazardous situations due to this belief without close observation. Pharmacological treatment has thus far proved completely ineffective. Patient has no response to any known anti-psychotic or other drugs.


The doctor looked back at the patient with a bit of pity in his eyes. Treatment had advanced greatly in the last decade, but there were unfortunately still cases that could not be cured. It appeared that this young man would be consigned to a life in an asylum. He started to speak again, and the doctor looked back in his direction.

"You want to know how I did it, don't you? Well, I can't explain that to you. I don't know it myself. I just know that it happened. That's just the way it is."

"That's all right. Why don't you just tell me what happened? From the beginning, please."

"Oh, you want just the facts, huh? I'll tell you how it happened... I was just starting my new job. Computer programmer and network administrator. Yeah, it was a big job... I expected a lot of 12, even 14 hour days... but I was ready for it.

"Anyway, first day on the job, I walked into the office. My friend Laura from college was there... I barely knew her in college, she was just one of the people who was in the group I hung out with. Well, I didn't really hang out with people... I was more or less a loner... but even I had to have some friends. So I knew her name. She was someone I said hi to.

"Well, you know how you -- well, maybe not you, maybe you're `social' -- ok, well, I have trouble getting to know new people. So, in a new situation with new people, if there's anyone familiar, I tend to gravitate towards them. I knew who she was. So I got to know her better... going to lunch, or even just dropping into her office when I had a free minute, helping out. There were always problems of some kind to work out.

"The two of us were in different project teams, so we didn't have that much contact through actual work. Still, I wound up spending a lot of time in her office, trying to ward off the feeling of loneliness. I'm so pathetic... I could never get a date. Or at least, that's what I believed. I think people were probably trying to be my friend, but I more or less ignored them. The only people I met were through Laura.

"There were about 10 people in Laura's project group. Some of them seemed to be socially involved mainly with people from other groups... just like me, I guess. But most of them stayed in their group, most of the time. It made sense, considering the amount of time they had to spend together anyway. And most of them seemed to get along pretty well.

"Then, there was..."

The patient paused and broke into a heavy coughing fit. The doctor simply observed, not attempting to intervene in any way. Maintaining the medical distance which allows one to treat a patient while having no feelings of any kind about him, the doctor pushed his spectacles, which had fallen down onto his nose, back toward his face.

Averting his eyes from what he considered an unpleasant and meaningless occurrence, the doctor looked around the patient's room. Between the thin metal bars in the small window in the door, which bore a striking resemblance to those of a prison, he saw the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights and the bright white of the paint which had been used on the walls and floor, stained in places by blood and vomit. The patient sat on the edge of a shabby cot, still trembling from the convulsions that had racked his body.

"Continue, please," said the doctor, in a tone with neither consolation nor rudeness.

"A real heartless bastard, eh? Well, whatever. As long as I'm locked up in here, I guess it doesn't matter one way or the other. I want to speak to a lawyer. Aren't you guys supposed to give me a phone call?"

"This is not a prison, Mr. Brooks, as you have been repeatedly informed. It is a treatment facility for the mentally ill. We want to help you. But we can't do that if you won't tell us as much as you possibly can."

"Yeah, sure... why would you want to treat me? That's just an excuse. This way, you don't have to go through a judge and jury and prove that I did it. Which you know perfectly well you couldn't do, even though I admitted to it."

"Mr. Brooks, you did not do it. It is physically impossible for you to have done it. This is the point that you have to grasp before you will be allowed to leave."

"If I applied your logic, then all of you would be behind bars and I'd be asking the questions. But never mind that. I'm not a fighter. I didn't want to... I'll tell you about that later. You said you wanted the rest of the facts, right? I'll give them to you. At the least, it will kill time."

"That attitude is more likely to produce an improvement in your condition, in our opinion."

"Cut the bull. Anyway, like I was saying -- then, there was Nadyne. Almost from the minute she got there, she didn't get along with the other people in her project team. It was worse for Laura, because they were both supposed to work on the same section of the program. That meant lots of time together, which was hell for Laura... or at least that's what she said. All the others in the project team nicknamed Nadyne the `Ice Princess.'

"But I wasn't really too sympathetic with them, because I'm always so wrapped up in my own feelings, and... how do I say this... oh, what the hell, there's no point in being ashamed of anything any more... I had fallen for her. Despite not knowing her. I think it was just infatuation... but I've never been good at reading my emotions, or anyone else's. To her I was just a good friend of someone she had to spend a lot of time with, I think.

"As I spent time around her, I got to know things about her. You know how that happens, probably better than I do. I learned that she was focused on money, but had no actual interest in what she was doing. One time, I heard that she was playing tennis, and assumed she was doing it for fun... until she told me that in fact, she was doing it to get in her boss's favor, just trying to get a promotion, like everything else she did. I learned that she really didn't know what she was doing at all, when she stared blankly at the mention of a floppy disk until someone showed her one, and called a CD-ROM a `round disk.' The rest couldn't imagine how she'd gotten hired at all. But I wasn't thinking about that...

"I thought -- you'll have to pardon me if this sounds sort of incoherent, I'm still trying to figure it out myself... well, she wouldn't have been called that physically attractive by `normal' standards, or even by mine -- it definitely wasn't like she was in the top 20% or anything... but there was certainly an element of that kind of thing going on in my mind... And then there was the mental element. Don't get me wrong, I never thought that she was smart, or that she had a great personality. But I think that I may be attracted to weakness, as perverse as that sounds... it gives me a way in which to assert my superiority. I don't know, I get into bad habits like that too easily.

"There was one other reason, though I wouldn't consider it at the time, because it was too painful to realize that my decisions were based on something so foolish. Apparent availability. It was easy to spend a lot of time with her... regardless of the quality of that time, I could delude myself more easily into believing I was making progress. And since she was so bad at her job, I had a built in excuse to be there -- helping her with her work. She would even ask me for help. How could I have refused?

"I couldn't get a read on how she felt about me, but that wasn't atypical. I couldn't really do that for anyone. I'm just not that empathetic, I guess. I asked Laura about it, and she very politely told me that she would stay out of it entirely, because she didn't want to seem like she was controlling my destiny, and she had prior opinions.

The doctor looked down at his pad, and scratched a few words with his pencil: "Patient appears to have severe anxiety concerning romantic situations as well. This may be a multiple-illness case." He then looked up, and the patient continued.

"So, life went on. Time passed. The job was easier for me than I had expected, which was a good thing, because I needed so much time to deal with my emotional problems. When I wouldn't see Nadyne for a couple of days, I would start to feel negatively about her -- sort of bringing myself in line with reality and my friends -- but then she would ask me for help again, and I would forget all about that.

"I got to know Laura better, too. There was never really much question of... that kind... of tension between us, because she was married, although her husband worked in Europe, and they rarely had the chance to see each other. So with her, it wasn't about that. She would provide me with support when I would get depressed, and I would help her out with her work, when I could. We both felt like we were getting more a benefit out of it than the other was... well, at least, I certainly did, and I hope she did too, because that's the best kind of trade.

"I was so confused... so pathetic... I was fine in work, in fact I was exemplary, but I didn't know where I was going in life. And it seemed like everything I did, even if it should have been enjoyable in and of itself, was actually just to take my mind off the fact that I couldn't find anyone. Not that I didn't have any friends. But this was something different -- someone who you wanted to spend the rest of your life with -- though I guess I did want to spend the rest of my life with my friends... I was very stringent about who deserved to be my friend... but still, there was something different about this, and it was the difference, I think, that made me get stuck.

"It was a couple of weeks later. Laura had introduced me to more of her friends, and I was getting to know some of their quirks, though I always felt like they were more friends-of-friends than people who valued me for who I was. I guess I was a social leach, in the same way that Nadyne was in her work... but you don't understand how hard it is for me to meet people, even just to have a simple conversation with.

"One day, Laura really introduced me to her friend Alice. I had already associated the name with the face, but now I actually got to know something about her. I can't say if it was Alice herself or just the situation at that time that made it happen...

"Alice hated Nadyne, and she wasn't afraid to show it. She would often talk about one thing or another that was wrong with her. She had no idea that she might offend me by this in any way, unlike Laura, because I kept my feelings a secret except from those I considered my closest friends. Even then I would sometimes hide them, afraid that they would shun me if they knew what emotions were really going through my head... hell, I even hid enough from myself. But what she said didn't really offend me anyway, because I was in one of the phases where I didn't really care about Nadyne one way or the other.

"Something inside me snapped one night when the three of us were working late. It was almost 10 o'clock... and there were Laura, Alice, and me, trying to debug a program that was being irritating. I was feeling bad... I can't remember if I told them about it, but I think they could tell, even if I didn't. Alice said she had a song that could encourage you and help you get through bad times... she put it on... it was beautiful... and then I hated Nadyne.

"It became an obsession. I guess I just have an obsessive personality, one way or another. I wouldn't act on it, but I'm pretty sure that was only because I was afraid of getting caught. Any time I would see her, thoughts of pushing her out of a window or stabbing her or strangling her with my bare hands would cross my mind, despite the guilt that accompanied them.

"And then it happened. Nadyne and I were crossing the street at the same time on the way from the parking lot to work. She was probably about ten yards ahead of me. I saw a bus at the limit of my range of vision, and thought of how nice it would be if Nadyne were to step in front of it right before it reached us, so that it wouldn't have any time to stop and her body would be crushed. I visualized it happening. It seemed like such a vivid visualization... it must have taken me a full minute to realize that it had actually happened. No, I didn't push her in front of that bus. But that doesn't reduce my responsibility in the least. I did it."

"That's enough for today, Mr. Brooks. You obviously have some serious issues which will have to be dealt with. The rest of the doctors and I will attempt to work out a plan for your treatment. How about you get some rest now?"

"I'm not crazy. I know you all think that, but it's just not true. I'm not sure I can explain it in a way that will convince you, but -- damnit, it's so frustrating! I know there's nothing wrong with me regarding my ability to recognize truth, but there's no way for me to make you see that, is there?"

"I'm afraid your delusion is so serious, Mr. Brooks, that not only do you not recognize the truth, you do not recognize your inability to recognize it. We shall discuss this later." The doctor turned and walked down the corridor, his footsteps ringing heavily in the patient's skull -- for a moment, the only object of the patient's perception.

2.

The patient screamed, with intensity and pitch both higher than a fire alarm. It was 2:30 in the morning. Sounds such as these were not supposed to emanate from a human being, still less at such a time. Yet they did.

Two nurses rushed towards his room. The patient was disrupting the other patients' sleep, and therefore their recovery; he had to be silenced, for his own good and more importantly for the good of the rest of the patients in the asylum. They brought with them a strong depressant which would knock out a bull for a day straight, and a syringe with which to inject it.

As one of the nurses inserted the key into the door, the patient's cries assumed a quality somehow even more desperate and pleading. He writhed against the chains that held him to the bed, and they creaked and groaned, despite his physical weakness and complete inability to free himself from them. When the door opened, he ceased to struggle against the chains, resigning himself to the fact that he could not escape, but continued to make sounds the human ear could hardly endure.

The nurses worked in perfect synchronization, practically as if they were of only one mind. One of them mixed the solution while the other ensured that the syringe was sterile and prepared. When they had finished their respective tasks, the syringe-carrying nurse drew the solution into the syringe, wiped the inside of the patient's elbow with an alcohol swab, and placed the syringe into position. As she inserted it into his skin, an incredibly loud and high sound that was almost a pure tone came out of the patient's mouth. Blood began spurting from the nurse's left ear, but she proceeded to inject the solution as if nothing had happened. The other nurse took out a piece of gauze and covered the ear with it.

The nurses stepped back and began fidgeting as the ticks of the clock resounded through their heads. The patient continued to scream as loudly and as pleadingly as before. "What's going on?" asked the one who had done the injection.

"I don't know. These things are supposed to take about a minute to have full effect. Be patient for a little while."

Thirty seconds had elapsed since the injection. The quality of the sounds coming from the patient's mouth remained the same. "I'm starting to worry about this. Shouldn't it have--"

The change was instantaneous. The patient ceased to make the sounds he had been making and began laughing maniacally. His face became flushed. Though the sounds he was making were completely different than they had been, they had the same quality of urgency and fear. His eyes were bloodshot.

The nurses' rationality left them entirely. They ran from the room as quickly as they could. The sound of the patient's laughter continued to ring through the halls for several minutes after they were gone. Then suddenly, all was quiet once again.

3.

His eyes opened. As he looked around, he realized he was not in a place he would have expected to find himself: he was not in his apartment, where he had slept for months; nor in the asylum where he had been forced to spend the last few days; nor even in his office, where, it was true, he had occasionally worked so late as to awaken around five o'clock with the cursor still blinking in front of him.

When one first awakens, one often has difficulty reasoning logically as one struggles to make an orderly transition between two states of mind requiring entirely different perceptual interpretations. After several minutes passed, he realized that this transition was simply not occurring at all. Though there seemed to be a great deal of data assaulting his senses, he was completely unable to integrate it in a meaningful and logically consistent fashion. He closed his eyes and attempted to cease thought for a while, but was no more successful in this attempt than he had been in the previous one.

When he opened his eyes again, it hit him, like an immense tidal wave hitting the shore while he stood at its very edge. It was a feeling of sadness; of regret for opportunities lost, of bitterness over choices made out of fear, of anger directed first outward at the world which made him suffer and then inward at the decisions he made which were truly to blame. It had guilt both for wanting what he did so much more than he actually needed it and for still finding himself unable to act to so as to achieve it. But most of all, it had loneliness -- not the loneliness of having no people around, but that which can be more painful, where those who are around one merely remind one of the absence of someone who one would Love -- someone who would Love one as well -- someone who would remove all pain with a single glance -- someone who... someone who it would be a mistake to attempt to describe with words.

It was his own emotion, unmistakably so, but he was granted in some way the ability to look at it as if from the third person. Yet he curiously found himself able neither to sympathize with it nor to offer any advice to the person who was obviously suffering deeply from it. In the next second, he was gripped by it again, and shaken through his entire being.

The image of Laura flashed before his eyes. She had tried to help him when he had gotten depressed. He had never really understood why... Of course, he had always known that people valued him for his skill in math, or in computers, or even in other subjects where his intelligence could find some tangential application. But being valued as a person was beyond his comprehension -- and she did. It was easy to see in the way she treated him that she didn't think of him as a piece of machinery that needed occasional tuning up.

She had been a great comfort to him. But there was nothing she could do for him now. The last conversation he'd had with her, she had seemed worried and frightened for him, as if he were heading for a disaster. He had tried to preserve some semblance of togetherness for her sake, even as he felt that he was being ripped apart. When he was leaving, she had asked him if he would be all right. He could see the genuine concern in her face. He had told her that he had promised someone that he would be. She had accepted it. He wondered now why he had said that, when he had not in fact made such a promise; and whether he would be able to behave as if he had, and as if he were keeping it.

He thought of the one to whom he would have made such a promise, if he had. It could not have been a normal person; the pain was so great that he could not have kept his promise unless there were some cosmic force to whom he had vowed it. The image of an angel, a being seemingly of pure light, flashed before him. Then an almost imperceptible change in the quality of that image occurred, and he knew somehow that the entity now hovering in front of him was real.

The being's eyes were closed, his wings folded. He had an appearance of great peace and of having slept for millennia. Then his eyes opened, his wings unfurled, and he began to speak.

"NUHB NUZH VOHTU VOHZIT..."

The man blinked. Was this just a series of nonsense syllables? But then his perception twisted slightly yet again, and the words were translated for him into English and gripped him with each sound in a way that made him feel them on a deeper level of his existence.

"You have suffered greatly for a long time. I would not have believed that I could do anything to help you. You always believed that I could not. For that I do not blame you. But if you will accept it, I would like to try to make you feel better."

"I will accept it."

"Do you believe that you understand what Love is?"

"I'm not sure..."

"Here." Images flashed through the man's mind, becoming a story, becoming many stories, expanding to encompass much of human existence compressed into a form he could comprehend. He saw a feeling qualitatively different from any he had seen before; a feeling of great nobility that outshone other considerations by so much as to make them vanish. And he saw pain. A woman and a man were talking to each other. The man had asked the woman whether she would go out with him. She told him that she would not; that he was incapable of really loving someone, and that he would realize it once he was done trying. If she had looked a little more closely, she would have seen the tear he was trying very hard to hold in his eye. But she did not.

"Do you understand now?" the angel asked.

"I do."

"That was me."

"I'm sorry..."

"Don't be. That's the way things were."

"I see."

"So I sympathize with how you are feeling. But there's no need to worry."

"It's so hard..."

"I know. There may not be someone for everyone . . . But I believe there will be someone for you."

"How are you so sure?"

"I just know. I'm almost always right when I know something like this... When it happens, you'll just know, too."

A great sense of peace washed over the man, and tears came to his eyes with the release of the greatest burden he had ever known. "... thank you."

"Glad to have helped," the angel said in a voice that betrayed kindness and compassion.

4.

When his eyes opened once again, he saw the sickly white of the walls and felt the chains around his wrists and ankles, but they had lost their power to hurt his feelings. They also ceased to bother his body much once he realized their impotence to affect his soul. As rays of sun began to pass through the tiny hole in the wall that was called a window here, he felt them play over his face, resonating with the core of his being.

Time passed, but he did not notice until he heard footsteps coming down the hall. The doctor stopped in front of his door. The twenty or so keys on his key chain jingled as he picked out the one which would unlock this particular door. There was a slightly giddy expression on his face, as of a schoolboy who had just found an entire box of candy with no adult supervision. As he turned the key, it would not have seemed inconsistent at all if he had burst out laughing insanely, though he did not in fact do so.

The doctor locked the door behind him and pulled a chair up. "Well, how are we doing today, Mr. Brooks?" he asked in a condescending, slightly disdainful tone.

"I can't explain it to you."

"Can't is a very strong word, isn't it, Mr. Brooks? We all want to help you, but it will be very hard for us if you won't tell us what's going on inside your brain."

"I don't think with my brain, I think with my mind. If you want to know about my brain, why don't you stick a bunch of wires in my head?"

"But..."

"But you can't do that? Or it would defeat the purpose? If you really want to know about my mind, don't ask about my brain."

"All right, I'll humor you then. What thoughts are going through your mind right now, Mr. Brooks?"

"I don't think a person like you can understand them."

"Would you tell me all the same?"

"Fine. A deep sense of peace and oneness with the Universe. The knowledge that I don't need to worry about whether I'll find someone... in fact, that I never did need to worry about it. The beginning of Enlightenment, perhaps."

"It sounds like a big deal to you."

"You have no idea... you're so pathetic."

"There's no need to be insulting, Mr. Brooks."

"It was a statement of fact."

"I see."

There was an awkward pause, and then the doctor spoke again. "Do you still believe you're responsible for Nadyne's death?"

"Believe? I know it... God, I was so fucking stupid! So centered on petty concerns that I didn't look at my overall well-being... I deserve to suffer... I just want to make it right, somehow, and yet I know that I can't."

"Mr. Brooks, I'm not inclined to view this as progress at all. You've merely become further entrenched in your false beliefs, thinking that you have given them `justification.' I'm afraid you may spend the rest of your life here, if this is going to be your attitude. In order to help you understand reality, you will have to drop the foolishness. You're obviously capable of rationality, and I fail to see why you won't exercise it."

"That comment merely shows that you are yourself incapable of that which you acknowledge I can do."

"Is it really necessary for you to be so difficult? We have been doing our utmost to help you, and all we're asking for is a little help on your part. Would it kill you to give it?"

"I'm not quite sure what you mean by `help'... certainly not what I would mean, anyway. But if I try to guess, maybe it wouldn't kill my body, but it would involve changing the very person who I am. A kind of death of the soul. Anyway, you can count on me not to do it. I've seen what is possible and I won't descend into your world again."

"You make it sound so negative... `descend'... but really, you've got your head in the clouds. We're just trying to pull you down to earth, to let you see what everyone knows is the truth."

"I don't get my truth from `everyone.' I get it from my own experiences, my own mind."

"That's a very arrogant view, Mr. Brooks."

"I'm an arrogant person, then, I guess. But it doesn't feel like it. It just feels like I'm recognizing the truth that was before my eyes all along."

"Yes, well, I'm afraid we're going to have to give you some more medication. I doubt it will help any more this time than it has in the past, but we have an obligation to keep trying. We are in the medical profession, after all, and it's our obligation to try to save people, even from themselves."

"You're the ones who need to be saved from yourselves..."

"I'll see you in a few minutes. I have to go get your medication." With those words, the doctor left the room. His brisk step and the glare in his eyes betrayed his impatience and frustration to any who cared to look.

When he returned, the same nurse who had given the injection last night followed him. She carried another needle, this one already filled with some kind of mind-altering drug that was supposed to help `psychotic' patients see `reality.' She flicked the needle to clear out any air bubbles that might have formed. Her expression was completely neutral.

"You're not going to inject me with that," the patient said in a clear, cold tone.

"Why on earth wouldn't we?" the doctor asked.

"I won't," said the nurse.

"What? Why on earth not? This man obviously needs the help badly."

"It's not meant to be this way."

"What are you talking about?"

The patient responded. "She sees what's going on. You're so wrapped up in your little dreams that none of this makes any sense to you... It's the end. Don't you see? This isn't the way it is."

"You are obviously more confused than I had thought... perhaps even the drug would have been insufficient."

"No... the past... I have to mend the past..."

"The past can't be changed. And even if it could, what would you do differently?"

"Maybe you'll have seen. And maybe you'll never have known I existed. Goodbye."

There was no patient in the room. For a second, the doctor's eyes met the nurse's in a glance of confusion and terror. Then they left the room. There was no patient in that room. There never had been. They had merely misread the chart and thought that a patient in that room had needed treatment. But they had obviously been mistaken, so there was no reason to linger.

5.

Russell's mind hesitated for a moment, but his body did not. The bus was coming very fast, and Nadyne appeared totally oblivious to it. Russell's legs and arms moved in a complex pattern that he could never have described in full detail. The effect was that he reached Nadyne and pulled her back towards the sidewalk without giving her a chance to resist in the minimal amount of time possible.

There was a pause of several seconds, as if they were stunned, and then a gasp simultaneously escaped both of their mouths. She turned to Russell, her eyes pleading for reassurance and an explanation of his actions, and said "What just happened?"

"Nadyne... I'm sorry."

"What do you have to be sorry for?"

"More than you know... More than you can know, I think. But it's going to be all right now... everything's going to be all right..." He struggled to fight back a tear, but was unsuccessful, and then tear after tear streamed down his face.

"What's wrong, Russell?"

"Nothing... these are... tears of joy..."

Though others had started to briskly walk across, the two of them waited for the light to turn red before crossing. Though the thought had never crossed Nadyne's mind and would never do so, and though Russell had left it behind with all of the pain he had been carrying, in that moment if one had looked at them it would have been a perfectly natural thought that the two of them were meant for each other. The sun beat down from a cloudless blue sky into the cold and wind. A shiver passed briefly through each of their bodies.

For the rest of the day, Russell somehow managed not to fumble with any of the messy details he had to attend to while scarcely letting them penetrate his conscious thought at all. It felt almost as if he were walking a couple of inches above the ground... no, not really. It was the same attribute transformed into thought -- the ability to grasp the meaning behind events with a glance -- a feeling of mastery over the world along with an acceptance of what one could not change -- a clarity of perception and thought and a sense of consecration to a purpose which was newly discovered and had yet been waiting all along.

The next day, Russell was unsure whether or not he could spare the time for lunch, but decided to go anyway. The place he picked was an obscure Vietnamese restaurant which had hit on hard times. When he walked in and saw Nadyne sitting alone in the corner, he was not shocked, but realized that he should have been. He walked over and sat with her.

He let her talk, about the people she got along with and those she didn't like, remaining the polite listener. He did not ignore her; he heard every word she said and responded when necessary in a way that seemed appropriate; but his thoughts were on another level, one that responded simultaneously and instantaneously to everything he perceived. She was not the one for him, he knew; she was only human. But he believed that the others had judged her too harshly -- and he found himself unable to be concerned with such pettiness anyway. So he smiled and conversed on her level -- and in so doing, he felt not as though he were reaching down into the mud of humanity, but as if he were playing with a small child.

When they had finished and the check arrived, Russell said simply "I'll pay for it." Nadyne protested. He insisted. When she finally said "You can, but only so I don't have to fight with you about it!," a broad smile came to his face. She smiled too, and then they both couldn't help laughing, and they walked out of the restaurant with everyone around giving them strange looks which they did not notice.

The words "you'll just know" kept running through Russell's mind, distorting his perception of every girl he saw. His subconscious jumped ahead for several seconds to an image of spending his life with whoever he gazed upon, until his mind caught up and reigned in his imagination. But he recognized this as a natural symptom of what had happened to him and thus was not too harsh on himself about it.

When he talked to people, he often wondered if they could recognize what was going through his mind. He guessed not, but it was still an interesting question. In conversations with people he had already known, he was surprised when they did not really seem to pick it up. It was a deep change, but perhaps its effects were somewhat subtle on the surface.

He dropped by Laura's office that afternoon. She was a bit stressed out from having too much work. When he tried to tell her how he had changed, she had recognized that he was different, but couldn't say exactly how. For that matter, Russell wasn't sure that he could have done so himself. It was evident in the way he looked at every little thing that happened to him, in the way he interpreted his perceptions, and in each thought that crossed his mind; but perhaps it was too vast and too important to be broken down into parts.

That night he went to a small park on the edge of the city. In the middle of it was a field of pure green grass several hundred yards on a side without a single monument or sidewalk or other human being. Russell was dressed in black -- black jeans, a black shirt, and a flowing black trenchcoat that just brushed the ground. He walked to the center of the field and lay down, looking up at the sky.

He lay there for hours, looking at the patterns in the clouds. They started out white on a blue sky, little puffy cotton balls somehow suspended in the air. There was not a hint of rain in them. As time went on, the sky began to turn purple, and for a few brief minutes the clouds were gilded with orange. The sun burnt in the same shade, a disc of pure light with its bottom edge touching the tips of the mountains. Then it gradually descended, its light still showing for half an hour after it was entirely below the horizon. When it was gone entirely, the sky was a shade of blue which could only be distinguished from black with special effort. Every here and there, it was interrupted by pinpricks of light -- enormous, far-away balls of fire.

When Russell had been lulled almost into sleep, there was a flash of light closely followed by a loud boom. He was startled for a second before he realized what it was -- fireworks. It was not New Years Eve, nor the Fourth of July, nor any other day when there would have been any reason to expect them. Yet they fit perfectly.

He sat up and stared at them, completely ignoring the rest of the world. First they were green and pink, going up alone or three or four at a time, each one a miniature model of the big bang. Then came some soft white ones. The sparks left trails which made the entire thing look strangely organic, almost like a flower. Next there were blue ones which turned white when they were just about to become impossible to see. They continued to alternate, slowly increasing in number. Then they stopped. Russell stared dumbly; what had just happened had not been a finale.

They began again, firing too rapidly to be looked at individually. They were pure white now, almost too bright for the human eye. As the sparks and the thunderous sounds continued to increase in frequency, Russell thought of an undying devotion to beauty. As they reached their apex, an image passed through his mind -- that of a girl who would be the one he Loved. And as they ceased, a smile crossed his face -- a proud, knowing smile that said he could bear any pain that came his way as long as he knew she would be there.


Kenn Hamm
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Last modified: Spring 2000